Everybody seems to complain about work. But new figures coming out of the US suggests the problem might be worse than we think. And there is no reason to think it's any different here.

Today, less than half of all American employees say they are satisfied with their work, down from 61 per cent twenty years ago, according to a study from The Conference Board. The US business research group says the lowest level of satisfaction is among the youngest workers with less than two out of every five satisfied with their work.

Why is this happening? It seems that most people seem to feel they are overworked, and not getting rewarded enough for what they're putting in. Only about a third were happy about their workload, and one in four said the company's promotion and bonus plans were ok.

True, the lowest level of job satisfaction was among workers earning $US15,000 ($A19,000) or less per year. But only half (52 per cent) of those whose earnings exceed $50,000 per year are happy with their job.

No surprises then that 20 per cent of employees say they'll be in a different job 12 months from now. Probably more.

Again, there's no reason to think it's not happening here.

But I reckon the problem is more complicated than overwork. It might even even be an excuse for something more insidious, and harder to control.

When you look at the figures, something doesn't add up. I explain why in a piece I wrote last year. As I explain in the piece, all the official data shows that hellishly long hours have become more common but it's not happening to everyone. At the same time, the figures show that people have more leisure time these days. I suspect the reason people are more pissed off with work is because, with rising wages, our time is worth more. Secondly, backfiring technology means we are multi-tasking and squeezing more into our day. No wonder people feel overworked.

So is work really that much more of a challenge than it was a few years ago? Why? Are you more stretched for time these days? And are you planning to move on?

Actually, I suspect it could be a lot worse. According to the study, the time spent with children is experienced by women as leisure time. That left me scratching my head because kids can, and should, be a lot of work. For both partners.

The other interesting part of the study is that if both the man and woman are on about the same money, the housework tends to be more evenly allocated. Also, it doesn't seem any different for the younger generation.

Now, I realise this study probably wouldn't surprise many readers, particularly the females. I mean, Mrs Management Line has always said men are like strippers - they just throw their clothes on the floor and expect you to be all over them.

But the study does raise some interesting questions. OK, unless you have a gun you can't force men to do more housework. But if, as the study suggests, there isn't much difference in housework time allocations when wages are equal, it suggests that the only way around this problem is for women to have more equality at work in terms of pay and career opportunities.

Does the study confirm your suspicions? What sort of solutions would you suggest?

Signs that more are starting to take global warming seriously. In Australia, The Age reports that the big energy companies are calling on the Howard Government to set up a national emissions trading scheme to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions and reduce the country's contribution to climate change.

But can the economy afford to tackle global warming? Is the price of tackling global warming too high? Or can we afford not to tackle it? I mean, you can't have an economy if you don't have an environment. You can listen to an interesting radio internet discussion of the issue on NPR.

And are people prepared to change their lifestyles? The Guardian's Economics editor Larry Elliott explains the problem here.

Put simply, he said, the global economy has been powering ahead at its fastest rate in decades, China and India are booming, and Africa is on a growth spurt. And when people get richer, they want more cars, plasma screen TVs and overseas holidays. Elliott says a strong economy gives politicians the space to deal with the problem but the question is whether people are prepared to change their lifestyles.

As UN secretary general Kofi Annan said last year: "The question is not whether climate change is happening but whether, in the face of this emergency, we ourselves can change fast enough."

Call it a sign of the times but the New York Times tells us that a group called Compact is getting more members around the world, including Australia. Its members reuse or recycle, buy only used or secondhand goods
except for food, health-related and personal items. The aim is to cut back the consumer toll on the environment.

To help people understand more about the emissions that our lifestyles create, the World Resources Institute in the US has developed a carbon footprint calculator.

So how much of an impact does going green have on your lifestyle and work patterns? Can you afford it? Is it that much of a change to what you do now? Are you taking any steps down the green carpet already?

Regardless of where you are, email now seems to be the main way people go about their work.When the system goes down or gets overloaded, it's a disaster. Just ask the academics at the University of Melbourne. According to this news report, their email server crashed, leaving the system in an e-black hole for the last two days. Right during Orientation Week too.

Trouble is when you get hundreds of messages a day, you can potentially end up with thousands crammed into your inbox at the end of the year. That's even if you delete the spam, office jokes, meeting notices, newsletters, and other irrelevant and outdated garbage.

So how do you organise? Bear in mind there are now reports that 90 per cent of email will be spam by the end of the year. Here are some tips from Web Worker Daily . They include working smarter with folders, using desktop search, filing your sent items and tags.

Of course, the best answer is just delete where you can. But that's where email addiction kicks in. Some people just keep checking their inboxes every few minutes, or can't bring themselves to delete those messages from two years ago. We know you're out there.

Here are 12 tips for handling email addiction, or emailolism. These include keeping your inbox empty, dealing immediately with any email that can be handled in two minutes or less but creating a file for stuff that will take longer (and then presumably giving yourself time to deal with it), using folders and turning off the automatic send/receive.

So do you suffer from emailolism? Tell us about your inbox. Can you organise it better? Any empty inboxes out there?

No shortage of talk now about the difference between men and women in business But do women have a better handle on the zeitgeist, the general
mood of the time?

That's the line from US author Margaret Heffernan as detailed here in
the Fast Company blog

It makes some interesting points.

She says their brains are wired differently which explains why women are becoming increasingly successful in
business. Women have a unique ability to connect the dots, Heffernan says, and understand the market on a gut level, detecting trends, tastes and what's going to be a flop. She reckons they have a greater taste for improvisation; a leadership style that prefers orchestration over command and control; more emphasis on values than on profits and, apparently, more of a nurturing concern for the well-being of employees.

The
interesting part is that it raises questions about the glass ceiling debate.

Now basically there are two sides in the debate. Is it that women lack the ambition to rise to the top? Or is it because they shunned from the network of mates and old boys?

The insights here turn that debate on its head. Many women, sick of banging their heads against the wall, drop out of the corporate scene and become entrepreneurs to control their personal and professional lives.

"Women speak and hear a language of connection and intimacy, and men speak and hear a language of status and independence. Men communicate to obtain information, establish their status, and show independence. Women communicate to create relationships, encourage interaction and exchange feelings."

From my experience, the difference between a female and male boss is this: men tend to see power in terms of status, women look at it in terms of the connections they make. Which, depending on your circumstances as an employee, may or not be a good thing.

So do women handle business differently? If so how? Do women see business opportunities that men don't? Let's hear from women who have stepped off the career ladder and set up their own business. And to men and women, is it different working for a female boss?

First let me do the disclaimer. My desk always looks out of control. A war zone with documents and reports all over the place. Still, I don't know why people always ask me how I can find anything. I mean, everything is exactly where I left it.

In any case, I'm still waiting for the paperless office.

But is it that bad? What do the experts say?

According to one scientific study, reported here, the average office desk harbours more bacteria than average workplace toilet, and the average office desktop has 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat.

Interestingly, women's desks, phones, computers and keyboards are three to four times messier, but men have germier wallets and PDAs.

OK, the study was sponsored by the detergent meisters at Clorox but it makes interesting points.

The other argument is that messy desks aren't bad at all. As this piece from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette points out, a cluttered desk goes with inventiveness, efficiency and flexibility.

It's a point I agree with completely. We seem to live in a society where there is so much change going on. Every day I hear from people feeling things are out of control. It's not surprise so many have this desire to keep their desks in order. Doing the little things is easier than the big things.

In any case, my mess has never got in the way of my productivity. But tell that to my colleagues.

So tell us about your desks? Is it a problem, or don't you care? Do you keep everything in order or are you like me? And does the mess of your work colleagues have any impact on you?

Still, people put in long hours, workplaces can get intense (if you let them) and stuff happens.

But hey, perhaps I'm just leading a sheltered life. Maybe it's more rampant than I think. A 2006 survey, reported by the Society for Human Resource Management this month, found that workplaces in the western part of the US are hormonal cesspools. Lots of chronic flirting and people admitting to having an "office spouse" (as if one isn't enough). No reason to think it doesn't happen here.

Maybe it's a sign of the times, but there are now reports that some US companies are asking senior executives, to sign "love contracts" that shield the company from liability if intimacy later congeals into a sexual harassment claim or other nasties.

Earlier this month too, a Harper's Bazaar study, reported in the Daily Mail, purportedly found most working women said that they would rather have a male boss and flirt their way to the top. It also claimed that you can forget about the sisterhood because they regarded other women as competition. Actually, I found that report a bit weird. I've heard plenty of alarming stories from females about how their male bosses tried to flirt with them. In those case, boundaries would be the key to survival.

But whether the study is right or garbage, it suggests that the issue is in the air. And if that's the case, what are the rules for flirting and office flings? And how do you handle it watching colleagues carry on like a bunch of rabbits?

With new federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull supporting a proposed carbon emissions market model that's at odds with the Kyoto Protocol, as reported in The Age this morning, and with reports of Treasurer Peter Costello disagreeing with Finance minister Nick Minchin over global warming, the question arises how businesses should go about tackling the issue of climate change.

Can a business really change direction? And can it turn green into gold?

A discussion paper from the Knowedge@Wharton series says business really has its work cut out going green. Some companies, like Shell, BP, GE and 3M, are making a buck out of it. But as the academics point out, it's hard work, and it requires courage, because it's not always clear that it will help the bottom line. One thing it means is that companies might have to rethink the way they reward managers.

As the piece says: "The rewards for adopting environmentally sound policies within a corporation take a long time, if ever, to become clear ... While many top executives may be focused on the big picture of improving a corporation's environmental record, front-line managers need new incentives to take actions because they are usually judged on their quarterly results."

So what can businesses do to address the global warming issue? Is business doing enough? Or should companies just leave it up to governments?

And for some, pets are big business. According to this news report, Americans spent about $US38.4 billion ($A49.51 billion) on goods and services for their pets, and we're not just talking dog food either. There's money to be made out of grooming, boarding, pet photography, dog walking and pet sitting, not to mention pet deli snacks, toys, luxury items and convenience items like programmable feeding and watering stations, warming mats and self-cleaning litter boxes.

Now the obssession with pets has come to the workplace. In the UK, organisations such as Royal Mail and the Bank of Scotland are giving employees special time off to look after sick pets, according to this report. It's called Peternity Leave.

And as the Workplace Law Network points out, pet care could be a legal minefield for employers. In September 2006, Royal Mail had to pay an employee an undisclosed amount after it fired him when he took a week off work following the death of his dog. Apparently the managers there had ignored the organisation's bereavement policies. The report also reveals that some companies like Google have implemented policies allowing people to bring pets to work after managers there realised staff didn't want to leave them at home or pay someone a fortune to walk Rover.

Peternity Leave has been attacked by Canadian journalist Arthur Weinreb as "patently absurd" and "further proof of the low value that too many people place on their employment and of the notion of personal responsibility".

But is he right? Pets can be part of the family. Besides that, there are plenty of lonely people out there and it's good having a pet around after a bad breakup, or a fight or on those lonely nights when you come home to an empty flat. Pets can keep people sane and in touch.

So should companies here have Peternity Leave policies? Or do you agree with Weinreb? What do you do when your pet is crook? Should these policies just apply to dogs and cats, or do you widen it to include budgies, tortoises, mice, rabbits and guinea pigs? And what about the idea of taking your pooch to work? And hey, more than one cat in the office mightn't be a good idea. What do you think?

But that raises more questions. Like are some jobs more likely to kill you than others? And what jobs are more likely to give you a longer life?

The answer: if you work for a bank, insurance company, stock broker or venture capitalists, you better start topping up your super.

A new study, published in the Sunday Times, has found that male financial services employees are the ones who live the longest. Based on mortality assumptions that British companies are using to work out payments for their final salary pension schemes, they will live to 86. Defence and aerospace employees will live almost just as long. At the bottom of the scale are tobacco workers.

The life expectancy list for females was not published. But according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics a boy born in 2002-04 can expect to live on average to 78.1 years of age, while a girl can expect to reach 83. So maybe it's just a case of adding five years for women.

Frankly, I would question these sorts of figures. Certain workplaces, even within the same sector, are more stressful than others. The same applies to positions. And changes in diet and lifestyle would throw these figures out.

So is it really less stressful working for a bank? Let's hear from financial services employees and bosses. Are some jobs more likely to send you to an early grave?

Daniel Bobinski asks a similar question in this piece from the Management Issues online journal. The customer is not always right but the problem is that the customer always has the last word. The trick for sales staff, he says, is to work out what the customer wants, what the customer actually needs and then bring the two together.

They always seem ask that in job interviews and performance appraisals.

But it's a dumb question. None of us are good at predicting the future.

Which means that career planning could be a complete waste of time. Some good insights from Jeremy Dean's PsyBlog.

"Our culture worships planning. Everything must be planned in advance. Our days, week, years, our entire lives. We have diaries, schedules, checklists, targets, goals, aims, strategies, visions even. Career planning is the most insidious of these cults precisely because it encourages a feeling of control over your reactions to future events."

The reality, says Dean, is that people are pretty bad at predicting what will make them happy in the future because there aren't many certainties to bank on. Stuff that we never thought of happens all the time. And we don't actually know it's good or bad until we do it.

Which explains why people can change their careers several times over their lifetimes. And why you might run into a lawyer who runs a marketing business or an ex-accountant who renovates houses. Jazz pioneer Herbie Hancock started out as an engineering student. At one stage, the great poet TS Eliot worked as a banker.

''Your future self is probably a stranger to you," says Dean. "And, on some level, you know it. That's why it might be hard for an 18 year old to choose their career, but it's a damn sight harder for someone in midlife when limitations have been learnt.''.

So what's the answer? Writer and researcher Richard Oliver says that instead of planning everything, we're better off just improvising. He explains more in this piece Purpose Drift: Making It Up As We Go Along.

"So far as we know, human beings are the only creatures conscious of fragility. To counter this sense of vulernability, machine thinking promises a world of predictability, of certainty ... Plans, goals, formal processes and targets can be blinkers blinding us to the valuable information that is generated by the actions we take to implement them. Information that simply isn't available until that action has been taken."

So does career planning work? How many changes of career have you had? How many times have you walked into a new job and decided this isn't for me? Do you like moving around? Or are you a one-career planner?

"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way"- Pink Floyd

OK, I've never liked that band but there's something in the verse. Let's face it, from time to time we all do it. Some more than others. For many of us, umming and ahhing is a way of life, from getting that boring project finished to filling in your tax return. So what makes people procrastinate?

Steel finds that procrastinators usually have less confidence in themselves and, not surprisingly are easily distracted. He reckons it also helps explain why people have trouble keeping New Year's resolutions.

Steel has even reduced it to a mathematical formula using the Greek letter gamma Γ. The formula is this: Utility = E x V / Γ D. Utility is defined as the desirability of the task, E = how much the person expects to finish the job, V = the value of getting it over and done with, Γ = its immediacy and D = the person's sensitivity to delay.

So what do you do when you're twiddling your thumbs and getting nowhere fast? Some suggestions from BusinessWeek, flowing from Steel's study: forcing yourself to do what needs to be done; doing the unpleasant work when you have the most energy - early, and in the morning; avoiding goals and doing the work in steps; unplugging or ignoring distractions, which would include TV and emails; working to the five-minute rule where you commit to do the job for five minutes and at the end of that, commit to another five minutes and finally asking yourself why you procrastinate.

So are you a procrastinator? What makes you umm and ahh? What sort of jobs do you keep putting off? What's the best way of getting the job done?